5 ms·

Portal, Portal2, Tomb Raider, Kerbal space program, Shadow of Mordor, Rocket League, The Talos Principle are some of the AAA games that I've played on my linux

Portal, Portal2, Tomb Raider, Kerbal space program, Shadow of Mordor, Rocket League, The Talos Principle are some of the AAA games that I've played on my linux mint box in the last few years. I am just an occasional gamer and I do not have a gaming machine (amd fx8350, nvidia gtx770, 1GBram) but all these games worked flawlessly. No wine, no glitches no driver problems. I don't know if it would have been "good enough" for professional gamers (I admit I play on "high details" instead of "ultra high details" mode)

BEEdwards 9y ago
Shadow of Mordor and Tomb Raider are the only AAA game on your list. The rest are indie games tiny budget indie games.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Everyone's list is different. And it's not about the size of the budget, it's about quality (in different meanings of it).
  - Armisael16 9y ago
    AAA is in fact precisely about the size of the budget and amount of promotion.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      Which again isn't equal to quality (enough to mention some "AAA" releases which were complete trash, remember Batman: Arkham Knight fiasco?). So again, AAA or not AAA, quality is what matters, both artistic and technical. Today, good studios are releasing games for Linux. Such as inXile, Obsidian and others.
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        Nothing you said is wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that quality doesn't sell. Once a game is "good enough" it often comes down to marketing, and the studios putting out for Linux do not control a majority of the marketing dollars.
        shmerl 9y ago
        Quality sells, but it requires more effort naturally.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    That's like calling a small Indie film a Blockbuster and dismissing objections as a matter of opinion. The term AAA is analogous to Blockbuster in the film industry. It's a reference to both budget and expected unit sales. Blockbuster movies have budgets starting in the hundreds of millions where as Indie films budges are usually in the single to double digit millions. Video games are no different in that respect.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      No, it's like saying that good art doesn't equal to whether big publisher funds it or not, and millions in budget can result in trash result. That's why I don't like the term AAA, it's way too confusing, conflating unrelated and often orthogonal issues (budget, publisher funding vs independent development, quality and so on). Anyway, there are big budget games coming out for Linux, so above is really besides the point.
      - cptskippy 9y ago
        It has nothing to do with the quality or content. There are plenty of Hollywood Blockbusters that are awful, most in fact, but they still cost a lot of money to make. Budget is a good indicator of audience numbers regardless of quality.
        shmerl 9y ago
        I mean artistic quality, as in good art in general. And why should we care about awful games? I buy games which are interesting to me, not based on their budget size.
        cptskippy 9y ago
        I understand what you're saying but the vast majority of people playing games do not share your sentiment and game studios go where the money is. Games like Braid, while beautiful, innovative, and memorable, don't bring in the money of the annually released cookie cutter FPS games like CoD or Battlefield that are shallower than spilled coffee on your desk. You can say that there are plenty of good games on Linux and everyone should switch but the reality is that the games people want to play are either unavailable or lacking in some way that makes Linux on the desktop a non starter. C64 and Amiga probably have a larger base than Linux.
- jokr004 9y ago
  I'm not a gamer by any stretch, but is Portal really an indie game?
  - Insanity 9y ago
    Portal 1 kind of was, but Valve got in on it. So half and half I guess. But portal 2 was not indie by any means :-)
  - ethelward 9y ago
    IMHO, no. It's made by Valve, you can't really sort them as an indie studio.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      It was made by a bunch of college students who were trying to start their own company who got bought by Valve partway through development.
- SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
  Rocket League started out that way, but I'm not sure its still that way. It started small, but is now one of the most popular online games and competitive e-sports - to the point where actual soccer clubs are supposedly setting up e-sports teams for it. Psyonix is building an empire around it.
  - Cpoll 9y ago
    > but is now one of the most popular online games and competitive e-sports Are there any numbers, I'm actually curious. I don't regularly see it on the Twitch.tv front page, so my impression was it was a bit behind the big names in esports (LoL, DotA, CS:GO, SC2, Hearthstone, Overwatch).
pantalaimon 9y ago
> Portal, Portal2, Tomb Raider, Kerbal space program, Shadow of Mordor, Rocket League, The Talos Principle are some of the AAA games that I've played on my linux mint box in the last few years. https://xkcd.com/606/ https://xkcd.com/606/
- shmerl 9y ago
  That's one of those xckd which are missing the point, and it's not uncommon for the author to have pointless sarcasm. That's why I mostly don't find his comics interesting.
- madez 9y ago
  Your comment is not on point. Here are the release dates with linux support date. Tomb Raider: 2013, 2016 Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: 2014, 2015 The Talos Principle: 2014, same day Here are some other random selection: Borderlands 2: 2012, 2014 Europa Universalis 4: 2013, same day Pillars of Eternity: 2015, same day Civilization 5: 2010, 2014 Civilization 6: 2016, 2017 Factorio: not yet released, already supports both There is a clear trend towards more games with linux support and less lag between windows release and linux release. My impression is that the tipping point for newer games is already in favour of linux support than not linux support. If you want to argue against linux gaming, I would argue with slightly older games that didn't receive a linux port and maybe never will.
cptskippy 9y ago
Reading your post brings this to mind: http://i.imgur.com/VAeA885.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VAeA885.jpg The terms gamer and gaming community are used by people to lump anyone who plays video games into a small digestible nugget. There is no single gaming community and the sheer size of each of the countless gaming communities dwarf most other hobby or enthusiast communities. Most people promoting gaming on Linux are so out of touch that they think having Tux Racer playable makes a Linux desktop computer a first or even second class gaming platform. Having The Witcher 3 or Tomb Raider on Linux is a novelty or a way to win brownie points. I'm not a serious gamer by any means, my highest played game only logs 403 hours of playtime, I've see people with ten times that. With that in mind, none of the games in my top 10 list in terms of hours (~1800 hours) played are available on Linux.
- xorfish 9y ago
  The two most played games on steam have a decent linux port. At this moment they make up nearly 1.3 million concurrent players. The rest of the top 10 games that do not have a linux port accumulate close to 0.7 million concurrent players. For a lot of players, CS:GO or Dota 2 are the only games they play regularly, so linux is a viable option for them.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    For those who play CS:GO and Dota 2 competitively, Linux isn't a viable option because CEVO and ESEA don't have clients for Linux. That's ignoring all of the bugs and quirky behavior that come with the platform. ALSA has a 10-100ms delay and for a game like CS:GO that relies so heavily on audio feedback, that's inexcusable. There are also issues with mouse input, lag, and random frame drops on Linux that have lingered for years. You'll see all kinds of posts showing Min/Max FPS and how Linux beats Windows at this game or that but you rarely see any mention of Average FPS because they're usually pretty awful.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      What is this you say about audio delay, I have had no such problem with Pulseaudio or Alsa
FussyZeus 9y ago
Along with what others have said, this is also due more to Valve's push for SteamOS to get greater adoption, and their push to have developers of engines like Source and Unreal prep for linux too. This has extremely little to do with the Linux projects individually.
BoorishBears 9y ago
There is no way Tomb Raider and Shadow of Mordor are running at High settings on a machine with 1GB of RAM and a horribly underpowered CPU

BEEdwards 9y ago

Shadow of Mordor and Tomb Raider are the only AAA game on your list. The rest are indie games tiny budget indie games.

shmerl 9y ago
Everyone's list is different. And it's not about the size of the budget, it's about quality (in different meanings of it).
- Armisael16 9y ago
  AAA is in fact precisely about the size of the budget and amount of promotion.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Which again isn't equal to quality (enough to mention some "AAA" releases which were complete trash, remember Batman: Arkham Knight fiasco?). So again, AAA or not AAA, quality is what matters, both artistic and technical. Today, good studios are releasing games for Linux. Such as inXile, Obsidian and others.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      Nothing you said is wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that quality doesn't sell. Once a game is "good enough" it often comes down to marketing, and the studios putting out for Linux do not control a majority of the marketing dollars.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        Quality sells, but it requires more effort naturally.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  That's like calling a small Indie film a Blockbuster and dismissing objections as a matter of opinion. The term AAA is analogous to Blockbuster in the film industry. It's a reference to both budget and expected unit sales. Blockbuster movies have budgets starting in the hundreds of millions where as Indie films budges are usually in the single to double digit millions. Video games are no different in that respect.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    No, it's like saying that good art doesn't equal to whether big publisher funds it or not, and millions in budget can result in trash result. That's why I don't like the term AAA, it's way too confusing, conflating unrelated and often orthogonal issues (budget, publisher funding vs independent development, quality and so on). Anyway, there are big budget games coming out for Linux, so above is really besides the point.
    - cptskippy 9y ago
      It has nothing to do with the quality or content. There are plenty of Hollywood Blockbusters that are awful, most in fact, but they still cost a lot of money to make. Budget is a good indicator of audience numbers regardless of quality.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        I mean artistic quality, as in good art in general. And why should we care about awful games? I buy games which are interesting to me, not based on their budget size.
        cptskippy 9y ago
        I understand what you're saying but the vast majority of people playing games do not share your sentiment and game studios go where the money is. Games like Braid, while beautiful, innovative, and memorable, don't bring in the money of the annually released cookie cutter FPS games like CoD or Battlefield that are shallower than spilled coffee on your desk. You can say that there are plenty of good games on Linux and everyone should switch but the reality is that the games people want to play are either unavailable or lacking in some way that makes Linux on the desktop a non starter. C64 and Amiga probably have a larger base than Linux.
jokr004 9y ago
I'm not a gamer by any stretch, but is Portal really an indie game?
- Insanity 9y ago
  Portal 1 kind of was, but Valve got in on it. So half and half I guess. But portal 2 was not indie by any means :-)
- ethelward 9y ago
  IMHO, no. It's made by Valve, you can't really sort them as an indie studio.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    It was made by a bunch of college students who were trying to start their own company who got bought by Valve partway through development.
SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
Rocket League started out that way, but I'm not sure its still that way. It started small, but is now one of the most popular online games and competitive e-sports - to the point where actual soccer clubs are supposedly setting up e-sports teams for it. Psyonix is building an empire around it.
- Cpoll 9y ago
  > but is now one of the most popular online games and competitive e-sports Are there any numbers, I'm actually curious. I don't regularly see it on the Twitch.tv front page, so my impression was it was a bit behind the big names in esports (LoL, DotA, CS:GO, SC2, Hearthstone, Overwatch).

pantalaimon 9y ago

> Portal, Portal2, Tomb Raider, Kerbal space program, Shadow of Mordor, Rocket League, The Talos Principle are some of the AAA games that I've played on my linux mint box in the last few years. https://xkcd.com/606/ https://xkcd.com/606/

shmerl 9y ago
That's one of those xckd which are missing the point, and it's not uncommon for the author to have pointless sarcasm. That's why I mostly don't find his comics interesting.
madez 9y ago
Your comment is not on point. Here are the release dates with linux support date. Tomb Raider: 2013, 2016 Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: 2014, 2015 The Talos Principle: 2014, same day Here are some other random selection: Borderlands 2: 2012, 2014 Europa Universalis 4: 2013, same day Pillars of Eternity: 2015, same day Civilization 5: 2010, 2014 Civilization 6: 2016, 2017 Factorio: not yet released, already supports both There is a clear trend towards more games with linux support and less lag between windows release and linux release. My impression is that the tipping point for newer games is already in favour of linux support than not linux support. If you want to argue against linux gaming, I would argue with slightly older games that didn't receive a linux port and maybe never will.

cptskippy 9y ago

Reading your post brings this to mind: http://i.imgur.com/VAeA885.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VAeA885.jpg The terms gamer and gaming community are used by people to lump anyone who plays video games into a small digestible nugget. There is no single gaming community and the sheer size of each of the countless gaming communities dwarf most other hobby or enthusiast communities. Most people promoting gaming on Linux are so out of touch that they think having Tux Racer playable makes a Linux desktop computer a first or even second class gaming platform. Having The Witcher 3 or Tomb Raider on Linux is a novelty or a way to win brownie points. I'm not a serious gamer by any means, my highest played game only logs 403 hours of playtime, I've see people with ten times that. With that in mind, none of the games in my top 10 list in terms of hours (~1800 hours) played are available on Linux.

xorfish 9y ago
The two most played games on steam have a decent linux port. At this moment they make up nearly 1.3 million concurrent players. The rest of the top 10 games that do not have a linux port accumulate close to 0.7 million concurrent players. For a lot of players, CS:GO or Dota 2 are the only games they play regularly, so linux is a viable option for them.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  For those who play CS:GO and Dota 2 competitively, Linux isn't a viable option because CEVO and ESEA don't have clients for Linux. That's ignoring all of the bugs and quirky behavior that come with the platform. ALSA has a 10-100ms delay and for a game like CS:GO that relies so heavily on audio feedback, that's inexcusable. There are also issues with mouse input, lag, and random frame drops on Linux that have lingered for years. You'll see all kinds of posts showing Min/Max FPS and how Linux beats Windows at this game or that but you rarely see any mention of Average FPS because they're usually pretty awful.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    What is this you say about audio delay, I have had no such problem with Pulseaudio or Alsa

FussyZeus 9y ago

Along with what others have said, this is also due more to Valve's push for SteamOS to get greater adoption, and their push to have developers of engines like Source and Unreal prep for linux too. This has extremely little to do with the Linux projects individually.

BoorishBears 9y ago

There is no way Tomb Raider and Shadow of Mordor are running at High settings on a machine with 1GB of RAM and a horribly underpowered CPU